We Are the Brennans

Denny is one of the secondary protagonists of the novel. As the oldest and the co-owner of the family pub, Brennan’s, he feels a strong sense of responsibility for his family’s happiness. While his desire for his family’s happiness has made them proud of him (he was Maura’s favorite), it also causes him to hide his problems from them. This leads to Theresa separating from him and taking their daughter, Molly. It also leads to Kale and Mickey becoming frustrated with Denny’s reckless financial decisions, including his loan from Billy Walsh.

Throughout the novel, Denny learns that he can only solve his financial and marital problems by opening himself up to his family. Once he tells Theresa about his financial troubles, she opens up and eventually moves back in with him. This emphasizes The Negative Impact of Secrets and Lies and how Denny almost destroyed his marriage by trying to handle his problems alone. He struggles to forgive his father for having an affair and his mother for driving Sunday away, but he soon decides that he must forgive his parents to find peace and move forward, using Redemption and Forgiveness as a Path to Healing. This newfound perspective pushes him to protect his father after learning he killed Billy. Being open with and forgiving them shows Denny The Importance of Family Unity.

Kale Collins is one of the secondary protagonists of the novel. He is Denny’s childhood best friend, one of the co-owners of Brennan’s, and Sunday’s ex-fiancé and romantic interest. He is extremely close to the Brennan family because they took him in as an unofficial seventh member due to his mother’s abandonment of him and his father’s old age when he was a child. As a result, he sees the Brennans as his family.

Sunday’s return makes him realize how much he still loves her, which both excites and horrifies him. He initially tries to make his marriage to Vivienne work, wanting to keep his vow to her and not abandon his family as his mother did, but he finds himself unable to fight his feelings for Sunday. He eventually decides that he and Vivienne will never be happy and that he cannot be happy without the Brennans in his life. His character arc drives the theme of The Importance of Family Unity, as he holds onto the Brennans as his found family and realizes that he must stay with them no matter what. Denny’s character arc also highlights The Negative Impact of Secrets and Lies when he admits that he and Vivienne are living a lie by pretending that his feelings for Sunday mean nothing.

Jackie Brennan is the third sibling of the Brennan family. He is an artist and frequently makes paintings of his family. As Sunday’s “Irish twin” (25), he was always closest to her and became her confidant after Billy’s attack. Though he wants her to tell the family what happened, Jackie believes that Sunday should do so on her terms and timing and that it is not his place to tell. Like the others, he is also highly protective of Sunday.

After his life was derailed two years before by an acquaintance who left marijuana in his car, Jackie works throughout the novel to get his life back on track. When his probation ends, he returns to working at Brennan’s, finding joy in his work and in helping his brother. He and Sunday also work together to help each other in their future goals; Sunday resumes supporting Jackie in his painting, and Jackie co-authors a children’s book with Sunday, drawing the illustrations for her. Throughout the novel, he becomes more involved in the family and occasionally manages the pub in Denny and Kale’s absence, signifying The Importance of Family Unity. He also lets go of blame and resentment, using Redemption and Forgiveness as a Path to Healing. He is a foil for Sunday, as they follow similar narrative trajectories, and their struggles both complement and contrast one another’s. Like Sunday, letting go of the past and becoming more involved with the pub and his family allows Jackie to move forward.

Mickey Brennan is the Brennan family’s patriarch and Maura Brennan’s widower. He is a Northern Irish immigrant, having come to the United States from Belfast to give himself and his future family a better life. He had provided for his family as a construction worker for years and values his children’s achievements. He is close with Sunday and has a “special place in his heart” (32) for her. After Sunday returns, he becomes determined to keep her in New York, in part because of the stability that she brings the family. He is protective of her as his only daughter. He is also protective of Shane due to his intellectual disability and admires the support that his other children have given Shane throughout the years.

Mickey has kept many secrets from his children, including an extramarital affair he had with Billy Walsh’s mother, Lynn. Having had the affair in part due to his wife’s emotional distance, he ended the affair after Billy found out. He regrets the affair, but he helped Lynn before she died and kept an eye on Billy. After learning that Billy hurt Sunday, he tries to atone for his affair. He encourages his family to do things together, and this drives the theme of Redemption and Forgiveness as a Path to Healing. Mickey hopes his help will make his children’s lives better and allow them to heal from the harm he and Billy had caused them. It is revealed that he killed Billy after finding out that he hurt Sunday, which leads to his children’s decision to protect him.

Vivienne Collins is Kale Collins’s wife of four years and the mother of their son, Luke. She grew up with a struggling single mother on West Manor’s Welfare Road and always felt envious of the Brennans due to their financial prosperity and the town’s love for them. Though she acts polite around the Brennans due to Kale’s closeness with them, she sees them as pretentious, self-important, dishonest, and uncaring toward anyone outside the family. She knew about Mickey’s affair with Lynn Walsh before his children discovered it and later tells them the whole town knew about it. In addition, she distrusts Sunday, knowing that she and Kale still have feelings for each other.

Vivienne acts as a romantic rival and foil for Sunday. She comes from a lower-class background while Sunday comes from a significantly privileged, upper-middle-class background. As a result of her insecurities, Vivienne is more conscious of fashion and societal trends, contrasting Sunday’s prioritization of comfort in her appearance and her disinterest in trends. Vivienne married Kale for financial security while Sunday planned to marry him for love.

When Kale announces his desire to divorce, Vivienne believes Kale is betraying her and abandoning her for the Brennans, who never accepted her and whom she never liked. She now sees Kale as selfish and pompous like the rest of the Brennans and decides that Kale and the Brennans “deserve each other” (262). Vivienne provides an outside perspective on the Brennans, who can do no wrong in each other’s eyes. Vivienne’s perspective adds balance to the narrative and shows how the Brennans treat people they consider outside of their circle.

Maura Brennan is the late mother of Denny, Sunday, Jackie, and Shane and the late wife of Mickey Brennan. As the family matriarch, she put tremendous work into making the Brennan house a home for her husband and children. She had a practical, orderly, and absolutist manner of parenting, adopting common sense and Irish Catholic traditionalism as her central tools. She loved her family but often struggled to support them emotionally and help them with complex problems. This was primarily due to her untreated physical health issues before her cancer diagnosis and her unaddressed emotional needs and problems. She was raised by strict, judgmental parents who taught her “to hide weaknesses and flaws” (39), thus causing her to develop a strong sense of shame around imperfections or failures. This shame caused her to shut out her husband and children and to push Sunday to secrecy for fear of her bringing “a stain on the soul of the whole family” (251).

Though she doted on her oldest child Denny, who was her favorite, she struggled to connect with Shane due to her belief that his intellectual disability was a punishment for her having him in her 40s. She only began bonding with him when he started helping her tend to the roses in her garden. She held Mickey’s affair with Lynn against him, believing it put a mark of shame upon the family, and hardly ever talked about it. Even after her death, her attitude toward shame affects Sunday and makes her journey to healing more difficult.